Legal Research

Linda Grant - The Clothes on Their Backs

By scott

Booker book number two is Linda Grant’s novel about a child of refugee parents, Vivien, searching for her own identity through the past of her uncle, Sandor - a reviled slum landlord.The book looks back on her own childhood growing up, and in particular her relationship with her parents, Evrin and ??Berta, and a pivotal encounter with an attempted visit by an uncle she did not know she had.There is a bitter rift between her father and her uncle, but it is one all but forgotten by Vivien until a personal tragedy of her own, forces her to look for her own truth and try and find out more about her infamous uncle. A ‘chance’ meeting with her Uncle (in which both pretend not to know who the other is) results in her helping to transcribe her uncle’s story. Whilst he wants to attempt to right the negative opinion the public and (one suspects) also one she may have of him; she - in turn - wants to learn about her own family history and how her parents ??came to be in the uk: what made her parents flee from Hungary to the UK? and why does her father seem to hate his brother - is it what he became in the UK, or does it run deeper? ?eeI enjoyed this book. The character of Uncle Sandor is a ??delight, and the book at its best when he is forcing Vivien to look and re-assess her own views and opinions - not just of him, but of others she interacts with. ??Whilst the book itself may not always succeed in its attempt to say that we judge by appearance, it works well enough to make this a thoughtful and enjoyable read.?

Full post as published by Information Overload on October 01, 2008 (boomark / email).